Tennessee has come a long way since the Scopes "monkey" trial. According to morons.org, the principal of Davy Crockett High School in Tennessee suspended student Curtis Walsh for participating in the annual National Day of Silence, "an annual nationwide student action in which students take a daylong vow of silence to illustrate the silence in which lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender people often suffer discrimination and violence." Today, ACLU's LGBT Staff Attorney sent a letter to the director of the Washington County School System, educating him about student free speech caselaw, encouraging him to get the school system's code of conduct up to speed with free speech jurisprudence (the school system currently prohibits students from engaging in "passive resistance"), and requesting that the principal apologize to Walsh and other students who were censored for exercising their constitutional rights (see Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. 503 [1969]).

In this case, the principal censored the students out of a fear of reprisal from other students. While those intentions appear to be good, a fear of violence is never a justification for prior restraint.